This is a post to answer some regular questions I get from friends and family. I’ll update it regularly as required.

First, I use an ad blocker. Sites don’t like you to block ads, but there are so many malicious ads out there that chew up bandwidth, slow my browser, and clutter my screen that I don’t recommend using a browser without an ad blocker.

The ad blocker I recommend is uBlock Origin by Raymond Hill on Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Microsoft Edge browsers.

Browsers I recommend:
” Firefox Quantum – currently the fastest browser I’ve tested and it works on just about every site I use.
” Google Chrome – good general use browser, and any Google sites are optimized for use with Chrome.
” Microsoft Edge – taking a lot of abuse from the tech crowd, but it’s fast, secure, and my only issue is problems with some sites.
” Epic Privacy Browser – based on Chrome, it’s designed to be secure. If you want to make sure you’re secure, this is the browser to use.
” Opera – another solid, fast browser, it has a nice VPN capability if you’re trying to access content that’s blocked based on your geography (example could be BBC content).

Next, I use the beta versions of the Firefox and Chrome browsers. They are very stable, all the add-ons and extensions I have work with the beta releases, and I think they are less vulnerable to exploits if I’m on a ‘not so safe site’. Reference links for both below, they are generally referenced as “dev channels” (as in development).

Next, if you want to make sure your browsing session is as secure as possible, check out the browsers below. Epic Privacy Browser and Opera (built-in VPN).

The Epic browser is particularly secure, but may give you problems on a financial services site or some commercial sites because it’s locked down pretty tight.

We are watching the FCC sell out the consumers it is supposed to protect. Ajit Pai is the head of the FCC. He’s a smart guy, but he is not the friend of the consumer, he’s a former Communication Industry law partner. He’s selling Network Neutrality like he’s on an infomercial (it’s not what he says it is). Now they are proposing “direct to voicemail” calls.

My suggestion is to get a Google Voice account and configure it as the voicemail for your cell phone. It will automatically detect ‘SPAM’ calls and you have the option to block calls (or block all calls…).

I got an e-mail from AT&T/DirecTV asking me to complete a survey on why I unsubscribed from DirecTV Now. I spent quite a bit of time crafting a comprehensive answer, only to receive the notice below. Part of my issue with DirecTV was the poor interface design. I now extend that criticism to the survey. If you limit my response to 999 characters, why not tell me? Then I won’t prepare a response that’s 302% larger than you will allow!

NOTE – there were two other text boxes, both limited the number of characters to other, smaller, and random quantities, both with no indication of what the limit would be.

Here is my full response about why I unsubscribed from DirecTV Now:

DirecTV Now was a horrific
experience.From the user
interface to buffering issues to the user interface (did I already say that,
yes, it’s that bad) to the content.No type of DVR solution, ‘subscribing’ to channels was OK, but
non-intuitive to use.

No CBS channel.At all.Yes, I know you
have to negotiate with CBS, but it’s a gaping hole.I added HBO and got two HBO channels added, which was underwhelming.Even at $35/month rate it wasn’t worth
the money.We watched ONE movie
(Deadpool) and the last 20 minutes of the film took almost an hour to watch due
to buffering issues.

Just so you don’t assume I have a poor Internet
connection, I have 200/10 Mbps (up/downlink speeds) and a commercial grade
firewall and wireless AP (Meraki).Chemical engineer by degree, working in IT and connected to the Internet
since 1986 (not a typo), Cisco and other certifications.Let’s just assume the problem is on your end and not my home
network…

Streaming from a laptop to a Chromecast was
USELESS.I stream other content
(YouTube, other) to Chromecast with no issues using the exact same configuration
(laptop, wireless channel, etc).Streaming from my PHONE (!!!) worked better than the laptop, and I can’t
account for that.Is the Android
app that much more efficient than streaming from a browser on a
laptop?

No Roku support out of the gate.Roku and beer are gifts from GOD, and you don’t support the Roku.Seriously?

I took advantage of the free Amazon Fire offer because,
as noted, you don’t support the Roku (aka, Gift From God).Nice device, but DirecTV sucks at life, so we were ‘less than pleased’
with the experience.We attempted
to watch Deadpool (previous reference) using the Amazon Fire.Other services worked fine, but not DirecTV Now.

And, the user interface sucks.As an example, I saved ‘favorite’ channels in the guide and selected
Favorites to display.It’s all too
easy to suddenly have every channel displayed.Next, I can’t seem to pause, continue,
and skip over content (like my DirecTV DVR).Yes, I realize there are device
constraints (but, shall I note, not on the Roku), but you’re not even
trying.Did you pull one of those
“Design this for free and I’ll give you great recommendations” with the
interface design team?Because it
LOOKS like that’s what you did.

I’m doing this all from memory.It’s like a nightmare where I can still see the screen doing something I
don’t want/like, oh, and the BUFFERING, Oh, the BUFFERING!!!

To summarize:

– User interface sucks

– No DVR capability

– No Roku support

– Buffering issues (with long shows?You tell me)

– No CBS content

– Poor performance with Amazon Fire

– Poor performance with Chromecast

= DirecTV Now Sucks at life

That’s the short version of why I unsubscribed from
DirecTV Now.I’m working furiously
to experiment with OTA TV, a local DVR, and cloud based services.I’m willing to bet anything I put together will be a better, more
satisfying experience than DirecTV Now.

“I was a small part of a Battle Bots team behind the robot Complete Control that was on Battle Bots recently on ABC. This $20 propane torch was on a robot. It was heralded as — I’m gonna sort of humble brag here — it was heralded as the most effective flame thrower in Battle Bots history because it recorded the first robot kill ever, which was really exciting for us. There’s a Youtube video of it. A minute and a half into the match, we get the robot in the gripper. We grab under the robot, lift them up, and then turn on the flame thrower. It’s a 3,000 degree torch, it’s coming from just a regular propane tank. The brilliance of this Harbor Freight tool is someone engineered it and figured out how to have it properly aspirated … It turns out just with a few little tweaks, including this spark gap generator, it became a robot killer. That was pretty awesome to see.”

I got a friends-and-family return-from-lease HP 8100 workstation. No RAM, no disk, just the basic workstation. I am trying to install Windows 10, but I’m having issues with the OS install failing. HP notes point to an out-of-date BIOS. The challenge is how to update the BIOS when you have no OS installed.

We have used an Obi 110 as our home phone service through Google Voice since June 2011. This month, we started having a problem dialing outbound and received a male voice referencing a password issue with the Google Voice account. The password was fine, and I found the screen shots below

Clicked link on support page, $10 for one year of Obihai Premium Support, and after the purchase, the software update was available. I have no problem with the support contract, and I’m very satisfied with the performance and features of the Obi110.

The problem I had was obscure, and I didn’t find any support references via Google or Bing searches. I hope someone finds this useful.

I was trying to optimize my home network and determined using a local DNS server significantly improved our internet experience. I did the testing with my home server, but it’s a beast (six cores, 32GB RAM, and 4-6TB storage). Since I have a spare Raspberry Pi B+, I figured I would use it.

Researching further, I found the Pi-Hole Project (http://pi-hole.net/). Not only does it provide a local DNS server, but it integrates ad filtering! It works quite well, and didn’t take any technical skills to provision.

Install Raspbian build on Raspberry Pi – reference link below

Run this command from the shell (command line): curl -L install.pi-hole.net | bash

Configure your computers/devices to use the Pi as their DNS server – I configured my wireless gateway to point to the Raspberry Pi so all my systems automatically use it.

NOTE – setup your gateway to use an external DNS as a secondary to avoid issues